Productivity Sauce

It seems that writing a markdown text editor is a popular pastime for many developers: hardly a day goes by without yet another markdown editor popping up somewhere on the web. Fortunately, not all of them feel like a weekend project waiting to be abandoned. Take Dillinger, for example. This web-based Markdown editor has been around for a while, and its developers continue to improving it at a steady pace. At first sight, Dillinger looks like just another Markdown editor. Its main window is split into two panes: one for editing and one for previewing the formatted text. However, Dillinger features several creature comforts that most users find handy. For starters, the editor has a word...

Using a simple Bash script and a cron job, you can turn Photocrumbs into an automated photo sharing bot. This way, you can drop multiple photos into a separate directory, and the script/cron job combo will publish them one-by-one at specified intervals (e.g., hourly, daily, etc.). The basic version of the Bash script is simplicity itself: #!/bin/bash
FILE=$(ls *.{jpeg,jpg,JPG,JPEG} | head -1)
mv $FILE /var/www/photocrumbs/photos/The script uses the ls and head tools to obtain the name of the first photo in the current directory. The script then copies the photo to the photos directory inside the Photocrumbs installation. To set up the script, create a text file and paste the code above...

There are plenty of Android apps that let you track and record your movements, and they all work in pretty much the same way: when activated, the apps obtain and save geographical coordinates at specific intervals. Enter GeoLog, an app that offers a different approach to tracking location. GeoLog gathers location data depending on your activity. For example, when walking, you don't need to obtain and save location data as often as when you are riding a bicycle or driving a car. And when you are standing still you don't need to gather location data at all. When you're on a photo walk, you might want to track location while you're actually walking, and not when you are taking a coffee break...

Despite its somewhat awkward name, Searchonymous is a really neat Firefox add-on that anonymizes your Google searches. It does this transparently, leaving your search preferences intact and keeping you logged in to other Google services like Gmail and YouTube. According to the developer, the add-on does this by blocking certain Google cookies and generating randomized ones that can't be used for tracking. At the same time, the add-on keeps cookies that contain your search preferences. Searchonymous also disables cookies that display the ads on Google's main page. In addition to that, Searchonymous can be installed without restarting Firefox. So what's not to like?

At first glance, Geo Bookmark looks like a rather pointless app. It adds a widget that lets you create geo bookmarks on the Home screen. You can then open the bookmarks using map apps like Google Maps or OsmAnd. But this one-trick pony can come in rather useful in many situations. On a trip, you can use Geo Bookmarks to save breadcrumbs for later reference. As a photographer, you can use the widget to track locations you've photographed.
The app is available on Google Play Store and F-Droid. Once you've installed it, add the Geo Bookmark widget to the Home screen, and you are done. Next time you need to bookmark the current location, tap...

The previous article described how you can use GitHub and Bitbucket for note-taking using the built-in text editors. In case GitHub's editor is not your cup of tea, you might want to give Prose a try. This web-based slick and lightweight Markdown text editor integrates nicely with GitHub. Once authorized, the editor gives you access to all your GitHub repositories, and you can open any text file for editing or create a new file from scratch.
Being a Markdown editor, Prose supports Markdown syntax highlighting, and the editor's interface features a toolbar that gives quick access to all basic formatting options. The interface itself is void...

Both Bitbucket and GitHub feature built-in editors which can be used for creating and editing files. This feature can come in handy when you need to quickly jot down a note, draft an article, or save a text snippet. GitHub's editor is particularly suitable for writing and note-taking, as it supports soft wrap and the zen mode which provides a distraction-free writing environment. Bitbucket's editor doesn't offer any of these nice touches, but the service lets you maintain private repositories free of charge. So Bitbucket makes a better choice if you want to keep your scribbles private without spending money.
Using GitHub's and Bitbucket's...